Devastated (long)

[Microcell]

I AM a nurse, and having said that, I have met and worked with many nurses who make "pseudo authoritative" comments based on misinformation and conjecture. Many will go to great lengths to disagree with physicians and present the theoretically possible but remotely likely scenario just to sound knowlegable. Many are just misinformed and "don't know what they don't know". You have asked and received the correct information from the experts already. Don't second guess what you know in your heart to be true.
Unfortunately it takes 10 positive statements to mitigate one negative statement. You may just need to repeat the good news that you heard and know to be true at least ten times.

Dawn, you just said what I was thinking! You were so elequent saying that, and all I could say is "Sometimes nurses are know it alls"!

 

[mispatatas]

DVCSADIE - you are right to say I need help. I do agree with that and am waiting to get it.

What upset me about the nurse was that every time I told her a reassuring thing that a doctor had told me, she negated it. Not in a serious, medical sense, but in an offhand sense.

I was just surprised because it is a delicate issue anyway and she treated it as if it was a joke.

 

[DawnCt1]

LUKENDC, thanks for your kind words.

I am on a waiting list for treatment but was doing so well I no longer felt I even needed it.

The guy who was bleeding kindly had a blood test when it happened which showed up negative.

However, today the nurse told me 'well that doesn't mean he didn't have it, he may have been in the window period'....

she just seemed very insensitive and has down my condition so much harm it's unbelievable.

She is an IDIOT!!! She seems to be suffering from the "I've gotta be right" syndrome! Ignore her. The guy was very nice to consent to a blood test. I doubt that he would have, had he had something to hide.

 

[Miss Jasmine]

I'm sorry for your condition but YOU are blowing things way out of proportion. Instead of blaming the nurse maybe you need to see a psycologist to fix the anxiety disorder. A nurses job is to inform not to hand hold and basically walk on eggshells in fear of a patients instability to hearing the truth. Unfortanately they just don't have the time.

Well that's just a bit rude. Obviously you have never dealt with an anxiety disorder. Rarely are they fixed, usually one learns how to cope with them.

 

[DawnCt1]

Dawn, you just said what I was thinking! You were so elequent saying that, and all I could say is "Sometimes nurses are know it alls"!

There are those out there who insist that it is "still possible to get AIDS from a mosquito bite". The fact is, its never happened.

 

[DisneyDmbNut]

First, you say that you gave her a shortened version, then you say you had this argument about it..I don't know..Maybe she was cold, but I don't think she was doing it with malice, I think she was just being who she is

 

[JennyMominRI]

There are those out there who insist that it is "still possible to get AIDS from a mosquito bite". The fact is, its never happened.

I have dealt with 2 people who believe this. Of course there was the womn who didn't want her child in the same swimming pool as me..It's shocking what people still believe.

 

[Maleficent13]

I think it is very easy for those who do not have an anxiety disorder to dismiss this, or to think that the OP is overreacting, unreasonable, or irrational. Let me assure you, as Christine said, the OP KNOWS this. She appears, to me, to understand what her disorder is. She knows she panics, overreacts, and has acute anxiety.

OP, I have to agree with DawnCT ( ). I have worked with nurses for 20+ years, and some of them are like Dawn describes. Others are WONDERFUL. It seems like you got one of the not so wonderful ones. I agree with Christine who said she was just a little Mary Sunshine

I can't be of much help, but you have my support. I think, however, that I would not jeopardize someone's job unless they exhibited gross misconduct. I don't feel insenstivity is that. But I would probably ask for a different nurse next time.

And to you.

 

[disykat]

I would write a letter of complaint. It will make you feel better, and if the docs you are working for think it is a valid concern they will talk to her about watching her mouth.

I had a nurse say something very inappropriate to me in the middle of the night in the hospital when I had my first child. I don't know if she got in trouble because I reported it the next day when I had a different nurse - I know I never saw her again. I also wrote a letter to the hospital. Sometimes you need to get some closure for yourself. Because of that experience I had my 2nd child in a different hospital and had a family member with me at ALL times. (Disclaimer - I am not saying all nurses are bad - I've had some great nurses. I'm just saying I had one "bad nurse" experience that makes me relate to the feelings of the OP)

I disagree with Sadie, I think it IS a nurse's job to do some hand holding. The doctor is the one who gets to do the diagnosis. If your chart was marked with an anxiety disorder, she should have been doing some eggshell walking. Not taking a patients mental state into account is poor practice.

 

[Hannathy]

I don't think the nurse did anything wrong. You yourself state you didn't go into all the details with her so she was reacting to just what you told her. She also probably had no time to read all your chart and maybe didn't even have it in front of you.

Please think about what you are worried about you state you are almost positive you got none of his blood on you, then how are you to have gotten any thing. If Hiv can just jump thru the air I would have about 1,000 cases of it by now. I worked in ICU's sometimes when we had 11 patients dying with HIV at at a time. If it was that easy to catch think about all the ER personel that are exposed and yet there are very few cases that can be traced to ER personel with casual contact. The man agreed to be tested-that alone tells you something. If he was trying to hide something he probably wouldn't have agreed to the testing. I am surprised he agreed especially if he hadn't bled all over you or if you hadn't given him mouth to mouth. I worked in a large city hospital when HIV was just becoming evident and we went back and forth with the precautions. One week we wore gloves and masks the next week we didn't, It is not that easy in most cases to catch. I would be more worried about Hepatitis but again if you didn't get blood on you how would you get it, and you are getting injections. RELAX

 

[DawnCt1]

. A nurses job is to inform not to hand hold and basically walk on eggshells in fear of a patients instability to hearing the truth. Unfortanately they just don't have the time.

What truth??? Her "truth"??? The OP has been told by several physicians and experts that she is at absolutely no risk and then this "know it all" comes along with her theorectical scenario because she feels the overwhelmin need to be right and the OP, who already is suffering from anxiety disorder, is thrown into a needless and unnecessary tail spin. And with regard to the "nurses job"; I am a nurse and its the nurse's duty and responsibility to concern themselves with the patient's mental health and well being as well as their physical health.
I can recall an adolescent anorexic on a unit that I worked on who was sure that if she could smell the food, she may have actually consumed a portion of it". Should I have said that it was "theoretically possible that she consumed a droplet of moisture that contained the cheeseburger molecule?"
Instead I told her that we would not include the aroma of the cheeseburger in her calorie count for the day.

 

[RadioNate]

I need more information here.

You saw a stranger beat up and lent him your phone so he could call a friend? Then you realized that he was bleeding and that he could be HIV positive. Even though you are 99.9% certain his blood didn't touch you, you went to the ER and made him get an HIV test. His HIV test came up negative. Now you are upset because the nurse giving you your follow up Hep B shot (why were you getting a Heb B shot again) said their MAY have been risk.

Is that what we are discussing?

I know you are stressed and the thought of being potentially infected with a deadly disease is scary but I don't think lending a likely HIV negative man a cel phone is cause for this much concern.

Now if he had come up positive or had been engaging in behaviors known to be risky (shared needle drug use, etc etc) then I would likely get tested in 3 month and do preventative treatments but the ER doctors should have taken a history from this guy to assess risk.

 

[mispatatas]

Disneydmb Nut - I didn;t really want to drag all the details up so when she asked what had happened (which were really irrelevant to my appointment with her - she just had to give me the second half of the shot) I just told her quickly.

But I did highlight the reasons I didn't have to worry - more for my own benefit than hers. That gave her the oppurtunity to negate everything that had helped me recover from my first anxiety attack!

 

[irishbosoxfan]

Just a little info for the people who dont feel that contact w/ someone who may or may not be infected would be something to worry about--This study deals with health care workers in a state but seeing as that the OP was in contact w/someone while offering aid it fits notice it says that non intact skin was found to be the source for transmission in 22.7% of the cases while transmission thru droplets to the eyes nose and mouth came in at 11.2% last was cuts not sure how they differentiated a cut from non intact skin though unless non intact skin dealt with cuts in mouth/kanker sores and kissing or anal tears and such as that


" most exposures (67%) occurred in nurses, followed by physicians and surgeons (17.5%). Needlesticks were the most common source of exposure (58.4%), followed by nonintact-skin and mucous-membrane contamination (22.7% and 11.2%, respectively) and cuts (7.7%). At the time of exposure, 77.5% of the HCWs knew or suspected that the source patient was HIV infected."

"The study demonstrates a small but real risk of HIV infection after percutaneous and mucous-membrane exposure to blood of HIV-infected patients and that transmission can occur during the "window period" of infection. Furthermore, exposures to HIV are not infrequent, and many exposures could be prevented with the use of barrier precautions, appropriate behaviors, and safer devices and techniques."


Hiv virus can be found in blood,semen,******l fluid,breast milk,saliva and tears.AND it can take several hours to reduce the amount of infectious virus by 90 to 99% once the virus has left the hosts body

 

[mispatatas]

Radionate - the stuff you said is pretty much spot on.

To be honest I think they gave me the hep-b shot to shut me up. But they wouldn't give me the shot they give to people who had come into a situation when they were at risk of HIV - they didn't feel I was in that position at all.

 

[disykat]

irishbosox fan, are you that nurse?

 

[VSL]

I need more information here.

to the OP - but I really think that a more clearer description of exactly what happened will help the DISers to help the OP.

 

[Miss Jasmine]

irishboxfan,
You are another breath of sunshine you know that. Link the source. It doesn't say how many people were involved in the study. And this has nothing to do with the OPs circumstances.

Jenny, I feel for you, I really do.

 

[mispatatas]

Irishbox fan...could you delete your previous post so that I don;'t have to read it?

I don't mean that in a callous way, I just know it would set me back even further and I don't want to stumble across it accidentally while I'm reading other responses.

Thanks

 

[irishbosoxfan]

http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/InSite-KB-ref.jsp?page=kb-07-02-08-01&rf=1-13